Novelist cancels US tour over racial profiling
One of Canada’s most celebrated writers has cancelled a book tour after complaining of racial profiling at US airports.
Novelist Rohinton Mistry, a native of India living in Canada, cancelled half-way through his US book tour, citing the “unbearable” humiliation of being searched at airports.
Mistry cancelled stops in Salt Lake City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Iowa City, Iowa, and Madison, Wisconsin, according to The Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s two national daily papers.
“As a person of colour he was stopped repeatedly and rudely at each airport along the way – to the point where the humiliation to him and his wife (with whom he has been travelling) has become unbearable,” said a statement from Mistry’s publicist.
Canada considers some US anti-terrorism policies discriminatory. It has objected to US border officials’ taking photographs and fingerprints of Canadian citizens born in Middle Eastern and Muslim countries.
Canada issued a travel advisory last month urging such citizens to avoid travel to the US, but foreign affairs minister Bill Graham said he has since received US guarantees that all Canadians appearing with a passport at a US border would be treated equally.
Mistry is a winner of the Kiriyama Prize, honouring books that promote understanding of Pacific Rim nations, for Family Matters, a novel set in Bombay and featuring an ailing patriarch whose children debate over how to care for him.
Family Matters, Mistry’s fourth book, also was a finalist for the Booker Prize.
